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Like others, I watched the latest Burger King “Whopper Virgins” commercial with a mixture of horror, incredulity and not a small amount disgust. Beyond thinking that this could be a lost scene from Idiocracy, I got to wondering about the strategic reasoning behind such a campaign - one that I think was designed to offend.

Produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the auters behind the magically absurd “Subservient Chicken”, the Whopper Virgins campaign presents itself as an anthropological study-cum-documentary in which “researchers” set out to geographically isolated areas to taste test the Whopper versus the Big Mac (and amazingly, these uber-isolated communities happen to reside within 15 minutes of both a Burger King and a McDonalds – huh?).

Now these are not dumb people. And surely at some point in the process of creating a multi-million dollar national campaign, someone must have raised their hand to point out that this might piss off a few people – from the prigs on the right objecting to the use of the word ‘virgin’ to the leftist intellectualistas who recoil at the cultural inappropriateness of the ad (and who likely do not eat at Burger King in the first place).

So that leaves us with the likely scenario that they knew full well that this campaign would offend. They wanted it to. They well understood the risks and made a business decision that the ink such a campaign would generate would overshadow any long-term negative impact (and yet here I am adding to the virtual chatter). No such thing as bad PR and all that.

But here's the thing -- you'd think they would at least give the perception that they care about what people think. Why not even make a token gesture that ties into the campaign -- for every whopper purchased in 2009, Burger King will donate a portion of the proceeds to the indigineous commities they exploited visited?

One thing I'll give them credit for -- the burgers in the ad look like the genuine, unappetizing article:

Full disclosure: the last time I had Burger King was in the Mexico City airport and consequentlly spent the first three days of my honeymoon in a Oaxaxan hospital... so I might be just a little bitter.

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Pizza moved to America with the Italians. After World War II numerous returning fighters who were positioned in Italy made an appeal for the pizza they experienced and tasted in Italy. Pizza in this day and age has no impediments.

sandwich consisting of one or more cooked patties of ground meat, usually beef, placed inside a sliced bun. Hamburgers are often served with lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, pickles, cheese and condiments such as mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, and green chile.